I am a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. A former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan, I also am a Senior Fellow in International Religious Persecution with the Institute on Religion and Public Policy. I am the author and editor of numerous books, including Foreign Follies: America's New Global Empire, The Politics of Plunder: Misgovernment in Washington, and Beyond Good Intentions: A Biblical View of Politics. I am a graduate of Florida State University and Stanford Law School.

When You Ban The Sale Of Ivory, You Ban Elephants

Elephant poaching is rampant throughout Africa. Unfortunately, Western nations have exacerbated the problem by banning the sale of ivory. Elephants are dying as a result. The West should reopen the ivory trade.

Artists and artisans have used ivory for thousands of years. Unfortunately, there’s no easy way to get tusks off a live elephant. So in 1989 the international sale of new ivory products was prohibited. Concluded analyst Peter Fitzmaurice, “with most nations adhering closely to the ban, the legal ivory trade has been decimated and value of this natural resource for range countries has been vastly diminished.”

Nevertheless, the illegal trade continues. Asia is the prime destination, but last year two New York City jewelers pled guilty to trafficking in illegal ivory. An estimated 38,000 African elephants are being killed annually, “more than at any time in decades,” reported the New York Times. The elephant population dropped from some 1.3 million in 1979 to 470,000 or even fewer today.

Failure is not for wont of conservation efforts. Reported the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES): “record levels of ivory were seized and sustained throughout the period 2009 to 2011.” But that was not nearly enough.

Earlier this month the New York Times reported: “As ivory poaching becomes more militarized, with rebel groups and even government armies slaughtering thousands of elephants across Africa to cash in on record-high ivory prices, a horrible mismatch is shaping up.” The Christian Science Monitor cited “the growing professionalism of poachers bankrolled by international criminals,” which had resulted in a sevenfold increase in the number of elephants killed in Kenya.

CITES warned that the killings threatened even “previously secure large populations.” Added the Monitor: “The increase has led many wildlife experts to declare the current situation a crisis worse even than the mass slaughter of Africa’s elephants in the 1970s and ‘80s, which led to the global ivory trade ban in 1989.”

In short, ivory prohibition has failed. It has been about as easy to stop elephant killing as to stop drug use. “As long as there is strong demand in the consumer countries, we probably will see people willing to risk going for ivory in the source countries,” warned Norwegian Oystein Storkersen, who chairs a CITES committee.

This demand makes ivory valuable. Explained Fitzmaurice: “The 1970s saw the price of ivory skyrocket. Suddenly, to a herder or subsistence farmer, this was no longer an animal but a walking fortune, worth more than a dozen years of honest toil. To currency-strapped governments and revolutionaries alike, ivory was a way to pay for more firearms and supplies.”

Countries with impoverished populations, incapable governments, corrupt officials, and limited resources were almost helpless. Political instability and armed conflict multiplied the problems. The World Conservation Union reviewed national efforts and pointed to “inadequate law enforcement,” “lack of resources and weak institutional capacity,” “human-elephant conflict,” “ongoing instability,” and “expansion of agriculture onto elephant migration routes.”

Occasional successes mattered little. CITES explained: “very few large-scale ivory seizures actually result in successful follow-up law enforcement actions, including investigations, arrests, convictions and the imposition of penalties that serve as deterrents.” The ivory seized sometimes disappears from government warehouses. CITES concluded: “The costs of protecting species with high-valued products may be beyond the means of many developing countries.”

At least as long as there no local support for elephant preservation. Observed elephant researcher Iain Douglas-Hamilton, “It’s pretty hopeless to stop elephant poaching in Africa unless you get local buy-in.”

Westerners see elephants as “charismatic mega-fauna,” majestic creatures to be preserved irrespective of cost. African farmers see giant rats and worse. When I visited Africa I observed how elephants stripped trees of bark as well as of foliage. Economists Erwin H. Bulte and G. Cornelis van Kooten estimated that “one elephant annually consumes as much forage as required to bring 4.7 cows to full maturity.” Farmer regularly die defending their crops from elephants.

When he was director of Kenya’s Wildlife Service David Western explained: “Elephants are the darlings of the Western world, but they are enemy number one in Kenya.” Indeed, he emphasized, “The African farmer’s enmity toward elephants is as visceral as Western mawkishness is passionate.”

This antipathy can be overcome, but only when elephants provide surrounding peoples with a monetary benefit. In most African countries elephants are the equivalent of the American buffalo. No one owns them and the people living closest to them make money by killing them. Reported the New York Times: “10,000 elephants in Gabon have been wiped out, some picked off by impoverished hunters, creeping around the jungle with rusty shotguns and willing to be paid in sacks of salt, others mowed down en masse by criminal gangs that slice off the dead elephants’ faces with chain saws.”

These incentives can be reversed. Explained CITES: “provided that their full value (i.e. both intrinsic and extrinsic) is fully realized by the landholders involved, not only will elephants be conserved but so will the accompanying range of biodiversity existing on such land.” Indeed, Fitzmaurice reported that in some parts of southern Africa today “Damaged land and crop losses are not only being tolerated, but villages are doing their best to guard against poachers. This surprising change in behavior is due to the proliferation of government programs that dispense licenses to villages, enabling locals, or paying hunters, to cull an allotted number of elephants each year.” In these areas poaching is down and some farmers have turned their marginal farms into game reserves.

Unfortunately, the money from hunting and photo safaris rarely is enough. Legalizing the trade in ivory and other elephant products would provide additional resources. In essence, elephants need to be treated like cattle. Their owners—or the equivalent, such as villagers living near elephants—need to benefit from the animals’ preservation. Noted Bulte and van Kooten: “When trade is allowed, the characteristics of elephant stocks as an asset are obviously different, because living elephants represent a growing and valuable source of future ivory. Hence, in the long run, trade in ivory may well promote elephant conservation.”

Prior to 1989 Botswana, Malawi, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe allowed legal sales. These nations typically enjoyed expanding elephant herds while the number of elephants in other African countries, such as Kenya and Tanzania, was shrinking. More recently, noted the World Conservation Union: “As elephant populations in South Africa continue to grow, arguments between those in favor of the resumption of culling and those against it have become increasingly heated.”

The southern African states won CITES approval for two “one-off” sales, in 1999 and 2008, of stockpiled ivory—seized from poachers or collected from elephants which had died or been culled. CITES explained: “The revenues are expected to boost the countries’ capacity to conserve biodiversity, strengthen enforcement controls and contribute to the livelihoods of the rural people in southern Africa.”

Post Your Comment

Post Your Reply

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.